


Scissors and Knives

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [527]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi, Past Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 14:26:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13389741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: pomrania askedPrompt: Eliot loses a finger or two on a job, like maybe he was hit by a stray bullet. He can still function normally, just a few small adjustments to make, so it shouldn't be a big deal. He's fine. Really. (It's the small things that get to him.)





	Scissors and Knives

It’s scissors of all things that bug him.

Knives are fine; knives rely on the palm of the hand, the strength of the thumb.  Scissors are all fingers, the balanced transferal of pressure from digit to digit.  Eliot can manage (he always  _manages_ ) but the sense of absence always just  _bugs him_.

Hardison had cracked a joke, back at the beginning, back when they hated each other on sight because that’s just what they did, thieves and hitters and hackers like them, sat on that rooftop without a clue of the adventure to come.  Hardison, eight fingers flying, had glanced down as he’d handed Eliot a comm, made that smug little smile all assholes did when he saw that one flange of his fingerless gloves was truly fingerless.

Parker hadn’t even glanced down.

She doesn’t look down now; Eliot had barely even registered her arrival in the room before she was by his side, a slim, plastic-wrapped package with a stick-on bow hap-hazardly squished on top.  “Christmas ain’t til tomorrow, darling,” Eliot said, voice a low rumble out of respect for where Hardison was snoring loudly on the sofa.

Parker’s smile is a thing of perfect beauty as she gently thrusts the package at him again.  “I took the staples out,” she said.

Stapled-in packages, another bane.  Eliot usually just used a knife.  He was probably lucky he hadn’t lost  _another_  finger. But as promised, the hard, shaped plastic pulled away easily from the cardboard backing.  He took the garish yellow device out and held it up.

“It’s a wheel cutter,” Parker explained, nodding at the wrapping paper laid flat on the table, the crooked cuts where Eliot and the scissors had fought for dominance.  “For cutting.”

The handle, hard and plasticky, still settled easily against his palm.  The wheel turned, barely a squeak before it cut a straight line in the green and red paper.

Parker smiled again, nodded once, and vanished from the room.

Eliot began to hum a Christmas carol under his breath as he continued wrapping presents.


End file.
